An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
The “Tragically Beautiful: Locked Tennis Courts” post from last weekend generated a couple of comments that sparked the realization that I had a lot more thoughts on this topic. First and foremost, is the fundamental truth that padlocking a court prevents people from playing tennis, but it does not prevent vandalism. A padlock is simply not a very effective security mechanism.
Andy Roddick loved to hit tennis balls from a very young age. The Umpire Who Gave Birth to me experienced that firsthand when Andy was 8 or 9 years old. She was officiating the Hamilton Park Tennis Center site for the Texas Junior Grand Slam tournament. While John Roddick was making a name for himself with the officials for… uhm… spirited behavior during the tournament, young Andy somewhat salvaged the family reputation by being generally adorable. Too young to play in the tournament, Andy was desperate to hit tennis balls with anyone who would tap them back and forth with him. The tournament desk kept him plied with used tennis balls to use at the backboard just to keep him out from underfoot.
Yesterday I lamented how my hometown systematically blocks public access to tennis courts that are ordinarily open in other municipalities. After being thwarted by the locks and chains at the middle school courts last weekend, I swung by a couple of courts that I knew would be available. As far as I know, Belair Park has the only courts in Wichita Falls that are routinely open and accessible. In fact, there are no gates at all so they can’t be closed and locked.
Last Saturday was a beautiful sunny day in my hometown. It was also perfectly windy. It is Wichita Falls, after all. Lately I have been making a point of hitting serves on windy days while facing the sun. My plan to hit a couple of baskets of serves with some backboard work for a full workout was thwarted by a red ball kids tournament fully occupying all the courts at the club. (Huzzah!) This is what brought me to the tragically locked gates of a local junior high school blocking my access to beautiful tennis courts and a backboard.
Torben Ulrich has a couple of albums on Spotify. I know that for a fact because as I was drafting this essay on his life I was struck with the sudden realization that his music was probably available there. Ulrich is one of the most fascinating characters I have stumbled across while writing for this site. While his music will not be a regular fixture on my Spotify rotation, I do have a sudden desire to own some of his artwork. To say that he is living an interesting life is an understatement.
The author of “Dynamite Doubles: Play Winning Tennis Today!” details how she got her start in tennis by hitting against “The Wall” at a tennis club in Denmark. Helle Sparre-Viragh’s parents essentially used the wall to keep her occupied while they played their own tennis. In addition to illustrating her early passion for hitting a tennis ball, Viragh advocates that the wall is an effective way to train. The top ranked professional player in Denmark would occasionally drop by the wall and train alongside Viragh.
Today I am sharing a tennis doubles drill which was adapted from Pat Blaskower’s “The Art of Doubles: Winning Tennis Strategies and Drills” and Helle Sparre Viragh’s “Dynamite Doubles: Play Winning Tennis Today” which are two books recently reviewed by this site. The drill explains the core principles of the staggered positions when both players are at the net. Even better, it is excellent practice for mastering that court positioning under dynamic playing conditions.
I am in lockstep agreement with first item listed in the USTA Long Term Strategic Plan. “Attract, engage, and retain new generations of diverse tennis participants.” This weekend I have been examining how difficult it is for beginning players to engage in the tennis ecosystem. #NationalTennisMonth is a perfect example of how tennis promotion tends to be isolated within a tennis echo-chamber. Surely we don’t think that the non-tennis community follows tennis organizations on twitter in any great numbers. Right…?
The USTA Strategic Initiatives unveiled in 2020 includes the imperative of providing positive experiences to new players who are experiencing tennis for the first time. As a sport with a steep learning curve, it is essential to get new players engaged with quality information and instruction on how to play the sport. It shouldn’t be hard for a player new to tennis to discover opportunities to engage with professional instruction, but it is. Tennis needs to rethink how it presents itself in the modern era.
It is intuitively obvious that every single person who actively plays tennis had that moment when someone pressed a racquet into their hands and they took their first swing at a ball. In other words, everybody was a beginner once upon a time. Even Roger Federer didn’t emerge from the womb with his elegant one-handed backhand. Additionally, it is highly likely that Federer missed the first time he took a cut at the ball. In observance of #NationalTennisMonth, today’s topic is how beginners can get started in tennis.